Curiouser & Curiouser

Response to “Just Landed” by Jer Thorpe

Just Landed by Jer Thorpe is one of the most inspirational works that we looked at this year. He finding where people are coming from and going to and as a traveler, this concept immediately took my attention. Using a combination of Twitter (people tweeting “just landed…”), Processing, MetaCarta, and hidden data, Thorpe is able to track where people have just landed and visually represented it.

I always know there are tons of planes and people traveling and moving from one place to another but I never thought that it could be visualized on a global scale. I think the way he visualized the data is interesting. It is like a new design for maps. From different views, you analyze what is going on differently. The view from the top makes the lines seem chaotic and going everywhere but the view from the side seems very neat on organized.

The visual aspect of the piece is very intriguing but there is a deeper concept that it makes me ponder. By tracking human movement, you can see how many people are actually far from home (or in contrast just returning home). It focuses on the human element of travel and movement by pulling the data from the people directly. I think that I would not have made this connection if Thorpe got the data from airlines instead of the people themselves.

I think it would be interesting to watch this piece progress over time. You would be able to see if there are patterns between places, or which places people are landing in most frequently and which places people are avoiding. This is all data that people could find out on their own but because it is visually displayed, it is easier to see these patterns in a spatial sense.

Just Landed has made me consider the different sources possible to pull data from and whatever source you choose, would effect the piece. There is a bias of sorts but it is also up to the artist to choose whether they would want that bias shown. There is also the decision of the form the visual aspect should take that is important. Thorpe chose to have the map of the world already lined out and work within the borders. If he removed those, he could still have the same data in the same location but it would become more abstract and one might not be able to point out the differences and similarities I pointed out in the previous paragraph.